


in its lonely & ramshackle head

by Murf1307



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Las Vegas Wedding, M/M, Morning After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 16:38:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: In 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalizes marriage equality in all fifty states.  To celebrate, Kitty and Rogue drag Bobby and Kurt to Vegas as the witnesses to their lesbian wedding.  It’s all going swimmingly, but then...





	in its lonely & ramshackle head

**Author's Note:**

> Contains references to drunk sex and whether or not that sex is regrettable.

Sunday morning, Bobby wakes up for the first time in nearly a decade to a familiar clicking sound. It’s held in his memory with crystal clarity, and it stops his breath to hear it now, _click-click_ beside him.

He opens his eyes, the warm sun scattering over the room, filtered through half-open blinds and too-thin curtains to reveal beside him:

John, awake, half-sitting against the headboard, his hair longer and more wrecked than Bobby remembers -- and he remembers it perfectly, what John looked like the last time they met, on Alcatraz Island in 2006.

He’s still got the bleach-blond highlights, and Bobby’s chest aches.

He’s starting to remember the night, the reasons why he’s got his arm thrown haphazard around John’s waist, and he aches a little more.

John’s staring into the middle distance, clicking his lighter, like he’s trying not to think about it. Bobby still knows that look, even after all these years. John’s always been good at pretending that everything’s fine, even though, Bobby now understands, _nothing_ ever was.

“Good morning,” he says, softly.

John goes stock-still, skipping a breath. “...Is it?”

It shouldn’t be. Bobby, by rights, should be horrified that he ever got drunk enough to even _consider_ this. But...it’s a good morning, a good way to wake up -- something familiar that cuts through the noise and takes him back to the good years, before everything fell apart.

Oh, there have been good moments since: Kitty graduating U of Chicago with her Masters degree, Scott finally realizing that he’s allowed to lean on other people as much as other people lean on him, the final destruction of the Sentinel Program; Bobby’s been an X-Man and an accountant, a math teacher and a lonely traveler.

But nothing is _simple_ anymore. And while nothing was ever easy, at least back then things were simple. Some things were right, and some were wrong, and that was it.

“Do you want it to be?” Bobby asks, softly, pushing upwards so he can curl onto his haunches and look at John properly. They’re both naked, but all Bobby can look at is John’s face, searching it for meaning, for a sense that he can know where this is going.

John doesn’t meet his eyes. He exhales, instead, and tilts his head, brushing his mouth against the corner of Bobby’s.

Bobby swallows, not sure how to interpret that, reminded of the first time John did that -- last night, with them almost falling-down drunk, in the bar Kitty wanted to visit after she and Rogue got married by an Elvis impersonator, just like they wanted.

“I think you’ve always known what I want,” John finally says, softly, full of self-recrimination.

“...I never knew. I’m sorry I didn’t.” He doesn’t know if it would’ve changed anything, if he still would’ve been too afraid to do something when the point of no return came and went.

John lifts his free hand, fingertips settling on the back of Bobby’s neck. Bobby shivers; this is more than he knows what to do with, so he just waits, and John says, softly, “You don’t have to apologize, you know. It’s been almost ten years.”

Bobby shakes his head, just a little. “I do. I -- I want you to know. Even if you don’t forgive me.”

“I never blamed you.”

“I did. Blame me. And you, a little.” Honesty seems like the better idea now, bald-faced in the morning, his eyes tracing the curve of John’s neck and wishing he had the nerve to touch him there with his hands.

John makes a soft noise, almost a laugh. “I left.”

“Yeah.”

Silence falls, and John is still touching Bobby. Bobby exhales softly. Gathering himself, he adds: “And then you never came back.”

“Would they have let me?” John is looking at him, and Bobby feels the lonely rolling off him in waves, a loneliness as crushing as the one he’s had curled up on his chest for years.

He shakes his head. “It — it would’ve been enough, for me, to know you wanted to.”

There’s a shudder in John’s next breath, and his fingers on the back of Bobby’s neck slip up into his hair. “You don’t know that. I — I was a monster by then. You would still have been afraid.”

Bobby swallows. “Probably. But...it would’ve been something.” More than the long line of nothing that led to this moment, anyway.

“And I — I hated you a little. I thought you were happy without me.” John looks down. “And if you weren’t, well, that was just another weapon I could use against you, because if you couldn’t love me, then I had to win.”

Finally, Bobby moves, his arm slipping out to wrap around John’s waist again. “What about now?”

John closes his eyes. “I don’t hate you anymore. Not even a little.”

“And I can...I can love you now.” There, out of his mouth, into the air, the words he knows he shouldn’t say, because they’re going to change everything, and he’s never been good at that — at tilting the world on its axis.

That’s always been more John’s area of expertise.

John looks at him, eyes open now, and the feeling in them threatens to crack Bobby open and unspool the strings of his heart. “...Can you?”

Bobby knows he can, knows that he can learn it, the way he learned to love John the first time around. He’ll know it’s happening this time, though, and maybe that will let him keep him, instead of letting him walk away into the snow, never to return.

He leans in, slowly, to press his lips to John’s, but John’s fingertips come up to press against his mouth to keep him away.

“I need you to say it. I need to _know_.” His voice trembles.

Bobby inhales, closing his eyes, free hand curling around John’s wrist, carefully, gently. He opens his eyes. “I can love you. I did, before you left. I just didn’t know it.”

John leans in this time, tipping their foreheads together. Bobby remembers, achingly, the night before, when John had done exactly this, his eyes searching, as though he might find what he was looking for in Bobby’s face. John closes his eyes, this time, seemingly satisfied. “I can’t promise you anything.”

“We don’t know each other anymore,” Bobby agrees. “But...we did, once. And...we were in love, weren’t we?”

“Yeah. We were. We just didn’t know it.” John cards his fingers through Bobby’s hair. “Should we — should we try again? See if we can do it right this time?”

Bobby’s heart is throbbing slowly, steadily in his chest. “I want to. I want to love you again, Johnny.”

John swallows at the old nickname. “Me too. But we’re — we’re different, now.” He slips his hand into Bobby’s, both settling between them. “What if we can’t be who we need to be?”

“Can’t we still try?” Bobby isn’t used to this, to be the one moving to take risks.

Not when it matters, anyway.

“Yeah. Yeah, snowflake. I think we can.”

John leans in, this time, and as they kiss, Bobby can feel a better future unfurling in the distance. It’s there, in the warm pads of John’s fingers on his skin, in the lighter forgotten on the sheets of the bed, in the cool shiver of memory that shifts like a wave through his veins.

He’s the one who pulls back to breathe, but he doesn’t go far. He smiles, instead, a little, hopeful thing.

And John, wonder of wonders, smiles back.


End file.
